Career growth – when to stop climbing, am I at my upward movement limit?

The world needs experienced people at all “levels”. We need experienced, quality janitors, and we need experienced, quality presidents, and everything in between. If your company doesn’t respect that, it smacks of other issues in the organization that you could stay and help fix, or go elsewhere so you don’t have to put up with their crap.

It’s difficult to not compare oneself to others. That’s a separate issue for me so I would tackle it separately, googling strategies for that.

In most places you get promoted because you established a relationship with people that can make this decision(promote). It is not because of merit or years served. If your manager do not like you and you are doing low impact work your chances are low regardless of other factors.

If you want to be promoted you need be visible in organization. You need to run projects that are important for higher ups. Most importantly you need to build network of people that would support you. These qualities are often in contrast on what individual contributor needs to be successful.

I personally prefer IC route. I dislike small talk, pointless meeting and playing a political game.

It sounds like you're in an environment that expects progress and creates a culture of "up or out". This isn't rare, and that situational awareness is a part of your information gathering to work out a response.

If this is truly the case, and staying in that role would be discomforting socially and professionally, then that's a useful framing. You can decide to use the appropriate time in that role to work out:

- what's the next move (up or out) - what value can be gained with the time remaining (it's now a mission!) - what are the potential moves if one takes their career in their own hands versus the org's preference for progress

I've been in exactly this situation. I got some "lucky" bumps up the corporate ladder early in my corporate career, which had the unintended consequence of maintaining that momentum and corporate expectation, while being fast tracked into this kinds of "leapfrog" roles.

The punchline is I chose to leave that industry and join another (a certain major open source software company), taking an enormous pay cut and lifestyle change. Which unlocked not only a lot of happy productivity doing good and meaningful work, but gave me the freedom to ultimately start my own company and have a larger impact... with a LOT less corporate performance art.

The "up or out" process isn't a bad thing. It's just a thing. How you choose to use or interact with it is discomforting, scary, and challenging, but ultimately is just another thing you have total agency over. Good luck, this sounds like a great life transition wrapped in the appearance of a socially awkward obstacle. You'll do great.

If you don't want to move, that's fine. Better to be happy where you're at (as long as the company is willing to tolerate you long-term in that position).

If you want to move up you'll need some different skills. "More of the same" won't cut it. Check out "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" -https://www.amazon.com/What-Got-Here-Wont-There/dp/073934223...

1. Stop comparing yourself to others.

2. Moving up (to a lead position) might be worse than a programmer job

3. Identify what you're missing and fill the gaps

Not everyone is meant to go "up". I used to be a manager and purposely went "down", because it's more fun to build features than discuss features and negotiate timelines. Pay doesn't necessarily rise when you go up either. This is a field where CEOs enjoy their $1 salaries and 80 hour work weeks.